Goldwater, then Reagan, made the Republican Party a party of ideals. Whatever you may think of those ideals is another matter altogether, but at the core of everything they fought for and everything they did stood a set of principles that anchored their positions.

Those kinds of people still exist in the Republican Party today. But those kinds of people have largely been shunted aside in favor of a party that is now driven but pure, unmediated rage. It might be tempting to feel sorry for the principled wing of the Republican Party if it weren’t for that fact that the principled wing — now dismissed as “the establishment” — is in large measure responsible for the pure screaming id that is now at the top of the GOP ticket. By courting the Tea Party and nurturing it from one manufactured outrage to the next, as a deliberately obstructive tactic against the past eight years of the Obama presidency. The party of ideas in Congress spent the last six years in an internal battle with itself, against the emerging party of “no” — it’s perhaps more accurately described as the party of “gaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!”

Trump is the “gaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!’s” standard bearer, but he’s really a johnny-come-lately to the scream-till-you-turn-blue wing. Maine Gov. Paul LePage, on the other hand, is something of an éminence grise of the tantrum set. Since his successful 2010 run for governor, LePaul has gone from one head-scratching outrage to the next. It’s hard to know how to rank the latest outrage against the others — there were have been so many that his Wikipedia page could probably be used as a useful diagnostic guide to identify political batshitism in its sufferers. But what’s particularly noteworthy about his latest remarks is how it perfectly illustrates the mindset of the Republican Party’s new establishment. Here is LePage’s message he left as a voicemail to State Rep. Drew Gattine:

Mr. Gattine, this is Governor Paul Richard LePage. I would like to talk to you about your comments about my being a racist, you cocksucker. I want to talk to you. I want you to prove that I’m a racist. I’ve spent my life helping black people and you little son-of-a-bitch, socialist cocksucker. You, I need you to, just freakin’, I want you to record this and make it public because I am after you. Thank you.”

LePage later invited a Portland Press Herald reporter and a two-person television crew from WMTW to the Blaine House, where during a 30-minute interview the governor described his anger with Gattine and others, told them he had left the phone message and said he wished he and the lawmaker could engage in an armed duel to settle the matter.

“When a snot-nosed little guy from Westbrook calls me a racist, now I’d like him to come up here because, tell you right now, I wish it were 1825,” LePage said. “And we would have a duel, that’s how angry I am, and I would not put my gun in the air, I guarantee you, I would not be (Alexander) Hamilton. I would point it right between his eyes, because he is a snot-nosed little runt and he has not done a damn thing since he’s been in this Legislature to help move the state forward.”

The ironic fact that LePage used a homophobic slur to argue that he’s not racist isn’t, in itself, being commented on very much. Comments lean more to wow, LePage really is a truly awful person, which kind of misses the point when in a political culture where being a truly awful person is a badge of honor and hailed as a substitute for “strength.” He also doubled down on the racially explosive comments that Gattine had criticized:

“Look, the bad guy is the bad guy, I don’t care what color he is,” LePage said. “When you go to war, if you know the enemy and the enemy dresses in red and you dress in blue, then you shoot at red.”

LePage then turned to House Minority Leader Ken Fredette, R-Newport, an officer who serves as a military lawyer in the Maine Air National Guard and sat in on the press conference. “Don’t you – Ken (Fredette) you’ve been in uniform? You shoot at the enemy. You try to identify the enemy and the enemy right now, the overwhelming majority of people coming in, are people of color or people of Hispanic origin.”

The governor met with reporters to explain statements he has made about drugs and race dating back to January, when he said in a town hall meeting in Bridgton that dealers from Connecticut and New York bring drugs to Maine and “impregnate a young white girl before they leave.”

LePage was the second sitting governor, after New Jersey’s Chris Christie, to endorse Trump last February. LePage is now being condemned by Democrats and Republicans alike, both locally and nationally. But don’t expect that to mean much. He won’t resign, and why would he? He’s a hero to his die-hard supporters. And besides, his remarks aren’t any more incendiary that those uttered by his own hero, the man sitting at the very top of his party’s ticket.

Teabag party favorite Gov. Paul LePage (R) of Maine has let his mouth fly again, and now the roosters are coming home to roost. Last month, LePage unleashed yet another round of controversy during a local television interview by saying that a Democratic state senator, Troy Jackson of Aroostook, who is trying to overturn LePage’s veto of the state budget, had a “black heart” and “claims to be for the people but he’s the first one to give it to the people without providing Vaseline.” Lawmakers and Mainers denounced LePage’s comments as “vulgar,” and even a few fellow Republicans offered what the Bangor Daily News called “mild criticism” of the Governor’s comments.

LePage issued a half-hearted “apology” — along the lines of “if you were offended then I apologize,” although he pointedly didn’t apologize to Jackson, only to his constituents. And with that, the Governor’s office had hoped that they had exerted the absolute minimum amount of effort to put the controversy behind them. But now, the state’s most wing-nuttiest anti-gay extremist to come to LePage’s defense. Michael Heath — you may remember his unsuccessful 2012 campaign against what he called “sodomy-based marriage” — and his buddy Paul Madore, leapt to LePage’s defense and put the controversy back onto front page news yesterday:

“Gov. Paul LePage was in good company using an allusion to sodomy to condemn expensive, big-government solutions to the challenges confronting Maine people,” said Heath to reporters and about a dozen members of the public. “Those condemned by the governor’s remark are the very same leaders who are promoting sodomy in our schools. This fact makes his allusion even more powerful. He used figurative language to reveal a profound truth about our current situation. Maine is being sodomized by the left, especially our impressionable and innocent children.”

…He was angry and he spoke out very emotionally and like a man and I loved it,” said Heath. “It felt like thunder and lightning to me. It’s so refreshing in this age of insanity when it comes to sexuality to hear someone in public life use sodomy, gay, homosexual — pick your word — in the proper context. It’s negative. … What’s good is sexuality in marriage and what is linked to having children and grandchildren. Civilization has survived because we reward that behavior and discourage the other behavior.”

LePage’s office sought to distance themselves from Heath, but Heath won’t let go of the spotlight. this morning, Heath issued an email to his followers threatening to institute a “sexual orientation registry”:

It’s Time for the “Sexual Orientation” Registry

In 2004 I threatened to publish the sexual orientation of politicians and their staff. The Left went apoplectic. In the devilish agony of the moment I apologized. My board put me on paid leave for a month. On the day I returned to work the state’s capitol city newspaper published a glowing tribute to Maine’s most influential homosexuality advocate.

A year later, after spending another million or two — or three (I can’t remember) bucks to intimidate the chattering class and fool the people, they finally added “sexual orientation” to the Maine Human Rights Act. Sexual orientation is a term of art that means “the right to sodomize (read kill) everything good without even thinking that is what you are doing.” It’s a kind of demonic stupor. Think Gollum and you’re on your way to understanding.

I’m pondering whether the ten year anniversary of that original email would be a good time to begin publishing the “Sexual Orientation Registry.” That’ll be next April. I’ll go back and find the exact date. My “evil deed” was all over the news at the time so it shouldn’t be too hard to find the date.

I figure waiting until next year to start publishing will give everyone time to choose which one (or more) of the thirty or more sexual orientations they want to claim for their own. It will take some time, I think. I want to give the politicians, government employees, teachers, pastors … Maine’s chattering class … plenty of time to figure it out. I don’t want to get it wrong.

Of course, that’ll take money:

If you want to help me fight to end the Left’s sexual tyranny then please pray, and make a financial donation. I’m pleased to report God has provided a pledge of $250 a month already!

Unfortunately you don’t have many choices about where to put your hard earned money if you want to win this fight. Pray that God gives me wisdom, as well as resources, as I proceed.

In 2009, Michael Heath was forced out of the Christian Civic League because anti-gay activists feared that his extreme rhetoric would wreck their plans to ban marriage at the ballot box that year. He left, and they prevailed. Heath went on to become board chair of Peter LaBarbera’s Americans for Truth (an SPLC-designated anti-gay hate group) and an Iowa state campaign director for Ron Paul in 2011. Heath returned to Maine in 2012 to press his crusade against “sodomy-based marriage when Mainers were asked to vote to overturn the 2009 ban on same-sex marriage. Heath lost and equality prevailed.

In this original BTB Investigation, we unveil the tragic story of Kirk Murphy, a four-year-old boy who was treated for “cross-gender disturbance” in 1970 by a young grad student by the name of George Rekers. This story is a stark reminder that there are severe and damaging consequences when therapists try to ensure that boys will be boys.

When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 500 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.

In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.

From the Inside: Focus on the Family’s “Love Won Out”

On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.

Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!

Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.

Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.

Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.

The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.